28 June 2015

Renault Lodgy – A Lodgycal Drive

We were at The Leela Kempinsky over the last weekend to experience the newly launched Renault Lodgy, an MPV from their stables. We arrived at Goa from Bangalore in the relatively young airline, Air Asia’s flight on Friday afternoon. The weather was amazing right from Bangalore and the light rains kept it at an even more romantic level. When we landed at Goa, it was a different story altogether. The rains were incessantly on and there was a light nip in the air. This also meant that the visibility was also fairly reduced making it a risky drive. An hour and half later, we were at The Leela. Post a warm welcome and freshening up, we were back for a round of debriefing about the car itself and its features which fast ended with a scrumptious dinner and being back to bed. Day 1 was just about it!

Day 2 started fairly early at about 6AM. A quick look outside brought in further fears about the kind of drive that we were going to have. The rains hadn’t stopped over night and it continued to pour even at this early an hour. An hour later, we as a team discussed our strategy and who would drive. Our team, consisting of Aditi, Ragini, Prateek (yes, my brother) and me, had only two drivers, Aditi and me. Of the other two, Ragini was totally a non Driver and Prateek had very less experience leaving the baton on our able shoulders. We finally hit the road at about 9AM with the Sun still playing hide and seek while the rains played the havoc. We had a planned route of 71.6 KM to cover, 35.8 KM each side. Our initial plan had been that Aditi would drive on our way back and I would drive on our way up towards The Lalit Ashok at the other end of Goa. In order to make our drive fun, each team (a total of 10 teams participated, we being the 10th) was given a set of 10 tasks alike that had to be completed before we reached The Lalit Ashok. We had great fun accomplishing those tasks and even managed to film a video of threatening BlogAdda team into giving all of us a Renault Lodgy each. We started back from The Lalit Ashok to a relatively breezy Goa and nearly no rains thankfully. At this point of time, we could finally keep the windows open and take in some fresh breeze. We drove in a very casual and relaxed manner on the way back leading to us almost forgetting our way back. Thankfully, we had the BlogAdda team coming right behind us. Post the drive, we relaxed for a while before being back for an amazing experience of a Live Band and Dance. Neha managed to hijack the band and had the dance floor crooning to her voice. I must say, she is one hell of an amazingly talented lady! The night was really long on Day 2 and found it difficult to let go of us. We managed to finally catch up with some much needed rest only by around 3AM in the morning.

Day 3 started off really late and it was soon time to check out. Our flight to Bangalore got delayed by around 2 hours which meant we were almost the last ones to leave the hotel. A turbulent one hour long flight later we were finally back in Bangalore. The drive back home felt even longer because I missed the girls badly over the last 3 days!